


Shared Life Experience

by iamjacksblindrage



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Asexual Character, Bisexual Character, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, M/M, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2063391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamjacksblindrage/pseuds/iamjacksblindrage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…or Bucky remembers a lot more than you think, Steve, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t absolutely oblivious in the ‘40’s.  Post-TWS, the recovery of Bucky Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Life Experience

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Marvel RarePair Exchange over on tumblr, for tumblr user captainoutlandish

Steve and Sam found Bucky hiding out in a dumpster behind a diner near the old neighborhood in Brooklyn just as the sun went down.  His hair was dirty and matted, there was dried blood crusted under his fingernails, and his prosthetic arm was hanging limply at his side.  It was surprisingly easy to urge him out of the dumpster and into Sam’s car.  He didn’t speak, just mutely allowed Steve to lead him around.  Sam drives the pair up to Stark Tower, whereupon Steve pulls Bucky from the back seat of the car and into the elevator.  Steve ducks back into the car and presses a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth with a murmured ‘thanks.’

They take the elevator up to Steve’s apartment, and Bucky complacently follows Steve through the living room and into the bathroom.  There, Steve turns the shower on, letting the water heat up.  Meanwhile, he turns to Bucky and sets to stripping him of his filthy clothes.  He unzips the ragged hoodie and peels it off his shoulders.  It sticks around his left shoulder, and when Steve gets it off, he sees why.  The dirty t-shirt underneath is soaked in blood.  Steve directs Bucky through getting the shirt over his right arm and his head before he attempts to pry the shirt away from his injured shoulder.  It peels away from the skin, pulling half healed scabs with it, and Steve cringes, but Bucky doesn’t move.

After getting Bucky out of all his clothes, Steve herds him into the shower.  He leaves him under the spray to make a run to the bedroom and grab a pair of sweats and a clean shirt for Bucky.  He dumps the old clothes in the garbage.  When he returns to the bathroom, Bucky’s attempting to wash his hair with his singular functioning arm.  Steve sighs and strips down, tossing his clothes next to the clean ones he had brought for Bucky, and climbed into the shower to help.  He pries the bottle from Bucky’s shaking hand and forces him to tip his head back under the water while he dumped some shampoo into the palm of his hand. 

Steve makes quick work of scrubbing Bucky’s hair clean and rinsing it.  Then he passes a wash cloth over to Bucky.  He squirts some shower gel into the wash cloth and leaves Bucky to scrub himself clean.  The water circling the drain is pink with blood. 

By the time Bucky turns the water off and opens the shower door, Steve’s back in his clothes and has a towel ready for Bucky.  He rubs it over the ex-assassin’s hair first before letting him dry himself the rest of the way off.  He hands Bucky the underwear and the sweatpants he’d grabbed, and helped him into both, then sat him down on the toilet lid.  He dug the first aid kid out of the cabinet and made quick work of cleaning and bandaging the wounds around Bucky’s prosthesis.  Steve tells him that he has a friend that could fix the arm for him while he’s taping the gauze down.  Bucky nods minutely, but doesn’t otherwise react.  Steve helps Bucky into a new t-shirt and leads him into his bedroom and motions for him to settle in, and he leaves the other man alone.

Sam’s sitting at the counter in the kitchen when Steve wanders out.  The man looks up at him when he approaches, solemn, and turns, opening his arms to Steve.  Steve just steps forward and wraps his arms around Sam’s shoulders, holding the other man close, and sighs.

“I know,” Sam murmurs, squeezing Steve’s middle.  “I know.”

Sam presses butterfly light kisses along Steve’s shoulder and cheek, rubbing the heel of his hand along the blonde’s spine.  It takes a while, but Sam eventually manages to usher Steve over to the sofa, where he forces the super soldier down on his back.  Steve tugs him down on top of him, and the couple lay there, sharing warmth and listening for Bucky.  Sam dozes on and off, but neither of them hear a peep out of the ex-assassin the entire night.

Sam gets up early the next morning and heads downstairs to the gym for a run.  It’s starting to get too cold for him to venture out onto the streets to run anymore, but since they’re staying at Stark Tower for the time being, it hasn’t been a problem.  Steve opts to stay in the apartment, reluctant to leave Bucky on his own.  He, instead, settles in front of the floor to ceiling windows with a sketch pad and a pencil and idly sketches the skyline.

By the time Sam returns, Steve still hasn’t heard anything from Bucky.  Sam greets Steve with a kiss and a smile before shedding his sweat-soaked sweatshirt and kicking off his sneakers. 

“I’m gonna make some pancakes,” he calls over his shoulder, heading into the kitchen.  “You wanna go see if Barnes wants some?”  Steve nods vaguely at Sam and pulls himself to his feet.  He drops the pad of paper on the coffee table on his way to the bedroom.  He knocks before he eases the door open.

“Hey, Bucky?” He says, stepping into the room.  Bucky’s sprawled out on his side on the floor, in front of the windows.  His flesh hand is pressed to the glass, and his limp prosthetic is pinned underneath him.  He tilts his head in Steve’s direction, indicating that he’s listening.  It’s a motion Steve’s familiar with, something Bucky would do when the air was cold and Steve’s lungs struggled to work.  It meant he was listening, but he didn’t want to interrupt, or he was worried and focused on listening for the wheeze that meant Steve needed his inhaler.

“Sam’s making pancakes.  Are you hungry?”  There’s a pause, then Bucky nods once.

“Sam,” he says, his voice hoarse.  “Is he the one with the wingpack?”

Steve nods, moving further into the room.

“Yeah,” he murmurs.  “You remember that?”

“I remember a lot of things,” Bucky replies.  It’s vague, and he doesn’t add anything else.  Steve leaves it for the time being.

“Do you want me to bring you some food, or do you wanna come out and eat with us?”

Bucky doesn’t respond verbally.  He rolls over enough to get his flesh arm underneath him and pushes himself upright.  Steve nods at him, understanding, and turns away, heading toward the kitchen.  He doesn’t look back to see if Bucky’s following.

Steve steps up next to Sam, grabbing ahold of his hip and pulling him in to kiss him sweetly on the cheek.  Sam ducks his head, smiling down at the pan in front of him.  On a plate on the counter sit a short stack of pancakes.  Steve makes quick work of placing three on a plate and setting it on the table at the far end of the kitchen.  Already set out are the butter dish and the bottle of syrup, as well as silverware for three.  Bucky’s hanging back, but Steve urges him forward, pointing at the plate on the table.

“Those are yours,” he says.  “I’ll be right there, alright?”  Bucky sits, and Steve turns back to the kitchen proper.  Sam’s already got a plate stacked high with pancakes cooked just the way Steve likes them-just barely undercooked.  Steve grins at the man and dips in to kiss him on the mouth before taking the plate from his grasp and joining Bucky at the table.  Bucky’s watching the pair, his head cocked, and his eyes dart between the two for a moment once Steve settles in the chair on Bucky’s left.

“Are you two going steady, then?” Bucky questions, cutting into his syrup drenched pancakes.  Steve hums his affirmative, and Sam, in the kitchen, smiles and laughs.

“I wasn’t sure, after Agent Carter…” Bucky trails off, giving Steve the side eye.  “Always were a fucking flirt, though, weren’t ya, Rogers?”

Steve laughs, joy glimmering in his eyes.

“There’s a word for it now, Buck.  I know you knew, you had to have known.”

“Yeah, after the incident with Bill Jameson, it was hard not to know,” Bucky scoffs.  Steve’s face falls into a delicate expression somewhere between shock and awe.

“Who the hell is Bill Jameson?” Sam inquires, as he sits down across from Bucky.

“He was a kid that Stevie had classes with when he was in art school,” Bucky tells him.  His voice is a bit rough, but it’s steady, as is his hand and his feet, and he’s looking Sam in the eye.  “He was a big fella, easily topping out at 6 foot 3 and 200 pounds of pure muscle.  I saw him around the docks a lot at nights.  He looked out for Steve a lot when he was sick and I was working.  There was an incident, summer before I got drafted, where I caught Bill and this cock-eyed sonufabitch neckin’ on the couch in our apartment.”

Sam gapes at Steve, who just shrugs.

“What can I say, I’ve got a type.”  Bucky snorts.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Dark haired, stubborn, and built.”  Bucky stuffs a too big bite of pancake into his mouth.  Steve flushes to his hairline, which Bucky catches.

“You’re kidding me!” Bucky exclaims around the mouthful of pancake, which he hastily chokes down.  “All those fuckin’ years it was me you were pinning after?”

“Course it was, Buck,” Steve mutters, avoiding Bucky’s gaze.  Under the table, Sam grips his knee.  “Not like I was gonna grab your attention, though, the way you used to chase skirts, huh?”

There’s a long moment of silence between the three men.  The only sounds are of silverware on ceramic and muffled chewing.

“Well,” Sam says, breaking the silence.  “I’m gonna go talk to Stark about gettin’ Barnes in to his workshop so we can get that arm working.”  He rinses his dishes and loads them into the dishwasher, and slips out the front door, barefoot.

“I’m sorry, Buck.” 

“It’s fine, Stevie.  I should’ve seen it.”  Bucky stands from his seat, gather his dishes and heading towards the kitchen.  On his way, he stops to press a kiss to the top of Steve’s head. 

“If I had known,” Bucky starts, standing in front of the sink.  “Back then, before the war.  I just want you to know I would’ve done something.  So you knew I loved you.  If there’s one thing I’m certain about through the haze of the wipes, it’s that I loved you.”  The man slinks off, closing himself in the bedroom again.  There’s no fuss, no tantrum, just quiet resignation.  Steve sighs, and sets to cleaning up the mess in the kitchen.  He loads the dishwasher and wipes down the counters and washes a few dishes too big for the dishwasher and puts them up.  Then he swipes the sketch pad off the coffee table and settles on the floor in front of the windows, going back to his sketching.

That night, Sam moves Bucky upstairs to one of the empty floors that had been recently remodeled to double as a workshop for Tony to work on Bucky’s arms and as an apartment for the ex-assassin, where he’d go through medical check-ups and visits from Tony’s psychiatric team.  Over the next few weeks, Steve haunts the hall outside Bucky’s apartment, but every day, Bucky refuses to see him.  Sam goes in to see him every few days, and Sam tells Steve how Bucky’s doing to ease the super soldier’s worries. 

Bucky spends weeks and weeks and weeks cooped up in his apartment.  Tony spends hours at a time working on the cybernetic arm, eventually fixing the faulty circuitry that was causing him problems.  The wounds around his shoulders heal into messy scars.  They learn, later on, that Bucky himself had caused the lacerations, in an attempt to claw off the offending appendage during a flashback.

It’s going on two months before Steve even sees hide or hair of Bucky again.  By this point, Steve had taking to visiting the gym in the mornings, making a quick trip to Bucky’s floor around lunch, then spending the evenings curled up with Sam, watching movies and discussing Bucky’s progress before going to bed.  Then, one day, out of the blue, Steve arrives in the gym first thing to find Bucky, his hair pulled back into a pony tail, running hard on a treadmill.  He makes contact with Steve when he walks in, and nods, before letting his eyes go unfocused.  Steve turns away from him, stretches, runs for a bit, and lifts before Bucky makes any attempt to talk to him.

“Stevie,” he says, suddenly behind Steve.  The super solider had been standing next to the wall, having a quick drink before doing a bit of a cool down jog and heading back upstairs.  He looks over his shoulder, surprised, before turning fully towards Bucky.

“Hey, Buck,” he greets.  “How’s it going?”

Bucky fiddles with his fingers for a moment before diving in to hug Steve.  Steve, without question, just wraps the man up in an equally enthusiastic hug.  Bucky trembles under his touch, hiding his face in Steve’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry about the last few weeks.  You’re the only thing I’ve got left from _before_ and I needed to reconcile with _now_ before I came to see you.”

“It’s alright, Bucky.  I get it.”

Steve sees a lot more of Bucky after that.  He starts joining Steve and Sam for their workouts every morning, and more often than not winds up in their apartment for the evenings after his midday therapy sessions.  He takes to Sam like a fish to water, and Steve notices how he actively seeks out physical contact as much as he can.  He doles out hugs much more frequently than Steve can ever remember, and he’ll curl up on the couch next to Sam and Steve and headbutt whoever’s closer until they reach down and tangle their fingers in his hair.  Everyone humors him, though, even Natasha, who was wary about having him in the Tower to begin with.

The first time Steve and Sam both go out on a mission, before Bucky’s cleared for field duty, the ex-assassin has a small meltdown.  The gym is empty when he reaches it that morning, and after his run, he heads up to their apartment, only to find the door locked.  No one answers when he knocks, which is when the panic starts to flood his system.  He takes the elevator back upstairs, going to Natasha’s apartment and pounding on her door.  There’s no answer there, either, and his heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest.  His next stop is the main lab where Bruce and Tony work most of the day.  When he steps out of the elevator there, his breath catches in his throat, at first, when it appears empty.  But then Bruce steps into view and the iron grip around his rib cage loosens a bit.

“Have you seen Steve or Sam or Nat?” Bucky asks, his voice embarrassingly high and tremulous.  Bruce’s face goes soft and concerned.  He sets the tablet in his hands on the closest flat surface and approaches Bucky slowly and deliberately.

“They got called out on a mission early this morning.  Tony and Clint are out with them.  They’ll be back tonight or tomorrow.”

Bucky’s chest tightens again, but Bruce is right there, speaking to him in soft, gentle tones.  He rubs a hand up and down Bucky’s flesh-and-blood arm, and invites him to stay in the lab for the rest of the day.  Bucky accepts, and once Bruce settles at one of the huge metal desks near the windows, Bucky sits on the floor next to him, resting his head against the doctor’s shin.  The sun streaming in through the window is warm and soothing, and Bruce rambles on about his work above him, and in no time, he’s fast asleep. 

When Bucky’s shaken awake, it’s dark, and the solid warmth of Bruce’s leg against his face is gone.  Crouching over him in Sam, still in his suit with a soft, fond smile on his face.

“Hey, Barnes.  Get a good nap in, old man?”

Bucky grins and punches him in the shoulder.  Sam offers him a hand up and wraps the nonagenarian up in a huge hug once he’s on his feet.

“Sorry we didn’t leave you a note or something when we went out this morning.  Banner told me you got a little worked up.”  Sam pauses, and pulls back to look Bucky in the eye.  “You know we didn’t mean to freak you out, right?”

Bucky nods.  Sam slaps his shoulder and tells him to head on up to his and Steve’s apartment, that the pair of them will be there soon.  Bucky grabs Sam’s hand real quick and squeezes it before heading in the direction of the elevator and down to Sam and Steve’s apartment.  He waits outside their door until the pair of them exit the elevator, changed out of their suits and into jeans and t-shirts.  Steve unlocks the door and Bucky immediately flops down on the couch.  Sam laughs delightedly and makes a comment about cooking some dinner for the three of them, and Steve smiles and leaves him with a kiss before going off in search of his sketchbook and pencils and joining Bucky in the living room.  Bucky slumps over and drops his head in Steve’s lap, silently begging for a hand in his hair.  Steve props the sketchbook up on his right knee and drops his left hand down onto Bucky’s hair.

When Sam wanders out to tell them dinner’s ready, Steve’s abandoned his sketchpad on the coffee table.  Bucky’s cradled against Steve’s chest, playing idly with Steve’s collar.  They’re talking in hushed tones, heads bent together.  Steve’s sketchpad is open in front of them, and the page contains a quick sketch of the curve of Bucky’s shoulder, the curl of his hair around his jaw, the slope of his neck.  Sam leans against the doorframe, smiling fondly at the pair of centenarians.  He watches while Steve and Bucky smile together, and Steve peppers kisses on the crown of Bucky’s head, and Bucky brushes his flesh thumb along the line of Steve’s cheekbone. 

“Y’all are cute as hell, ya know that?”

Both men jump at the sound of Sam’s voice, looking vaguely guilty.  Sam’s grin widens.

“Dinner’s ready.  Get your asses in here.”

At the table, Sam already has three plates dished up with hearty amounts of spaghetti, a plate of garlic bread in the center.  Steve and Bucky settle next to each other, and Sam sits next to Steve.  They all dig into the pasta, and for a long minute, the only sound is the crunch of the bread and the scrape of forks against the plates.

“Ya know,” Sam breaks the silence.  “If y’all got something going on, I wouldn’t be offended.  You two boneheads spent most of your lives together.  I ain’t got nothing on that.”

“Sam-“ Steve starts, but Sam stops him.

“I understand if that’s what you want, Steve.  Just tell me what you want.”

Steve looks absolutely helpless, glancing back and forth between Sam and Bucky.  Bucky, for his part, looks completely horrified.

“I wouldn’t think of takin’ Stevie away from you, Sam,” Bucky murmurs.  “You two have something special and I will not step between you.  I like you too much.”

There’s a long pause.  It’s tense, and Steve’s hidden his face in his hands.

“Please don’t make me choose.”  Steve’s voice is soft and broken, muffled by his large palms.  “I love you both so much, don’t make me choose.”

Bucky and Sam meet each other’s eyes.  Bucky wrings his hands, but Sam just shrugs at him.

“Alright,” he says.  “We won’t make you choose.”

Steve peers at them from under his fingers, his eyes watery and his brow furrowed.  Bucky sighs and braces his hands on the table top.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, Steve.”  When he stops, Sam reaches across the table and grabs his hand, squeezing it encouragingly.  “I love you, punk, I do.  But ever since Austria, I don’t know, man, I’ve been different.  Something Zola did to me, I think.  It’s just.  Even the thought of having sex freaks me out anymore.  I just want you to know, that if you do want me, that’s something I won’t be able to give you.”

“That being said,” Sam interjects.  “I’m damn fond of Barnes, and I wanna keep him around.  So what do you say, Steve?”

Steve floundered with his words for a moment before spitting out, “but where does that put us all relationship-wise?”

Sam lets go of Bucky’s hand and rises from his chair, turning to pull Steve into a hug.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured.  “It’s alright to be polyamorous, ok?  And, ya know what?  I love you to death, and I’m way too invested in Barnes for that to be any normal friendship, alright?  We’ll be fine, but you gotta talk to us.”

Steve nods against Sam’s chest, squeezing him tight.  Sam strokes the super soldier’s hair and makes soft, vaguely reassuring noises in the back of his throat.  Bucky grab’s Steve’s hand and rubs his thumb across the other man’s knuckles. 

The three men, eventually, finish dinner, and Sam shoos the other two out into the living room while he cleans up after them.  They go, reluctantly, and when Sam finally joins them, they’ve created a nest of pillows and blankets on the living room floor and have the next movie on Steve’s list queued up on the TV.  Somehow, Sam ends up in the middle of the pile, with his head and shoulders resting on Steve’s chest and Bucky tucked under his arm.  They all end up falling asleep like that, huddled together on the living room floor.

With the addition of Bucky into their relationship, it takes a while for everything to settle.  They’ve all got to learn each individual’s preferences and change their own actions on occasion.  They learn that Bucky, while uncomfortable with overtly sexual contact, will gratefully accept kisses from Steve and Sam.  They learn that Sam will recline against whoever is sitting on the couch with him, and that Bucky will do whatever he can to make sure Sam’s comfortable when they lay together on the sofa.  They learn that Bucky prefers to sleep on the far side of the bed, away from the door, simply because of habit after years of being completely alert at all times.  And if Steve and Sam’s good morning kisses turn over from affectionate to desirous, Bucky will clear out of the room, but not without interrupting them with kisses for each of them.  Once they figure things out, though, everything flows smoothly between the three of them.

 

* * *

 

The common room in the Avengers Tower was a bit fuller these days.  Now, with Natasha and Clint living their full time, and the Maximoff twins hunkering down for the time being, the team saw more of each other than ever before. 

It was oddly quiet, one afternoon mid-summer, but Bucky took advantage of the nearly empty floor.  The floor to ceiling windows that covered half of the living area let in ample sunlight, warming the room.  Bucky found that one side of the sectional sofa was bathed entirely in sunlight, and he settled down on it and promptly fell asleep.  He sleeps for a solid 2 hours before he’s awoken by a loud crash and quiet swearing.  Bucky’s on his feet in a heartbeat, suddenly faced with Sam, Natasha, and Tony standing around Clint, who’s lying on the floor, the vent cover from the ceiling next to his head.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Tony exclaims.  “You woke up Barnes.”

“Sorry, Buck,” Clint wheezes.  Bucky sighs and scoops up the archer and sets him on the couch he just vacated. 

“What have I told you about those damn vents, Barton?”

“That they are a strategically and structurally poor route through the tower,” Clint recites breathlessly to the ex-assassin.  Bucky swats at Clint’s shoulder before stepping out of the way to let Natasha take up the spot next to him.  Sam draws Bucky into his arms, and Bucky drops his head against the veteran’s shoulder, huffing a sigh.  Sam strokes his back softly for a few moments.

“And I was having such a nice time,” Bucky murmurs.  It startles a laugh out of Sam.

“C’mon,” he says.  “Let’s go find Steve.”

They find Steve in their apartment, stretched out in the sun on the sofa.  Sam chuckles under his breath, while Bucky settles on Steve’s chest.  The sudden movement and weight wakes the super soldier, but he just smiles and kisses Bucky’s forehead before closing his eyes and drifting back off.  Sam can’t help but smile at the pair of nonagenarians.  He sits on the floor next to the couch and lays his head on the edge of the cushions and slips into sleep himself, thinking about how lucky he is to have these two extraordinary men in his life.


End file.
